Published Thursday, October 28, 2004
Billings Gazette

Gazette opinion: Look at facts; don't buy I-147's political pitch

Initiative 147 proposes that Montanans reverse their 1998 decision to outlaw new cyanide heap-leach mines. Initiative 147 is being promoted chiefly by Canyon Resources, a Colorado company that already is at impasse with the state of Montana over cleanup of its cyanide leach gold mine that ceased operations nine years ago. Canyon Resources refused to pay for the study to determine how best to accomplish that cleanup, so the state had to use taxpayer money for the necessary study.

That record doesn't inspire confidence for doing more of the same business with the same firm and the same cyanide heap-leach process.

No new technology

In fact, I-147 doesn't provide for any new technologies. All of the safeguards proposed in I-147 have been used previously in cyanide leach gold mines in Montana, and all of them have failed to prevent water pollution or mine waste leakage.

Concerns about the process go beyond cyanide itself to the fact that leach processing of low-grade gold ore requires pulverizing many tons of rock to get a single ounce of gold. There's a large amount of what a state regulator recently called "environmentally complex" reclamation required.

Five cyanide heap-leach gold mines in Montana have been abandoned (including Canyon Resources' Kendall Mine), but not fully reclaimed. All are expected to need treatment of acidic water forever. Four of the mines were owned by the bankrupt Pegasus Gold. Bonds Pegasus posted won't provide the perpetual water treatment.

Canyon Resources has had its own financial problems: a lack of profitability dating back many years and a threat of being delisted this month by the American Stock Exchange for failing to file financial statements on time. (This week, the company filed the statements, announcing it lost $6.3 million in the first half of the year.)

An analysis of the environmental protection requirements written into I-147 showed that each point has been tried and failed in Montana already. For example, I-147 provides for leach solution impoundments designed to withstand 100-year storms. Jim Kuipers, a Butte consultant hired by I-147 opponents, found that four separate storms, each greater than the 100-year storm design, have occurred at the Zortman and Landusky mines in just 25 years. As a result, leach solution overflowed impoundments and spilled into ground and surface water.

Fishermen vs. Canyon Resources

Take a look at the money flowing into the battle over I-147. Two groups have formed to oppose I-147. One is Montanans for Common Sense Mining Laws, led by the Montana Environmental Information Center, which championed the cyanide leach ban back in 1998. The MEIC is the major funder of this political committee. The other I-147 opponent committee, Save the Blackfoot, lists its major contributors as Trout Unlimited chapters in Missoula and Ovando and the Clark Fork Coalition in Missoula.

On the proponents side, according to the latest reports filed, Canyon Resources alone has pumped $2.98 million into the campaign - 10 times as much as the two opponent committees have reported raising altogether.

Initiative 147 includes a clause that would specifically benefit Canyon Resources by restoring all the mining rights it had on Nov. 3, 1998. That's the day before Montana voters banned new cyanide leach mines, blocking the company's plan for a mine near the Blackfoot River in Western Montana.

Initiative 147 is an out-of-state mining company's multimillion-dollar attempt to turn back the clock. It's time for Montanans to move forward toward more responsible use and development of natural resources. Let's not go back to the failed processes of the past. We urge Montanans to vote against I-147.